The Price of Eternity
by animegus farmus
Summary: It's just a room, nothing more...


_Disclaimer: You can find my papers of ownership in the middle of the Labyrinth. Off you go now, have fun._

_Author's Note: Hello again Labyrinth fandom! It's been a while - just taking my muse out for some exercise. I seem constitutionally incapable of writing a Labyrinth tale without at least some measure of vagueness. Sigh. Ah well, hope you enjoy._

_PS Thanks muchly Lcsaf for the beta-ing._

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The first time he entered the room it was an accident. Exhausted, pulling a double, and still far too many days from the weekend, all he'd been looking for was a quiet place to lie down for a bit. The door off the supply room had seemed promising somehow, though there'd been no reason to suspect it was anything but a broom closet.

It wasn't.

The first thing he noticed, unsurprisingly, was the bed.

The second thing he noticed, with disappointment, was that it was occupied.

The third thing he noticed, blearily as his thoughts tried to shuffle themselves back in order, was that it was strangely bright and airy for what should have been a broom closet. Big, too, like the private rooms that used to occupy this wing of the old hospital, before it was remodelled and the new additions built. It was supposed to be all diagnostic imaging and labs here now. And broom closets, there were definitely supposed to be broom closets.

He stared blankly at the bed's occupant for a minute before shaking himself into semi-alertness and slipping quietly out of the room. He had no business there and he'd hate to wake the patient up to his brainless staring. Someone around here ought to be allowed to sleep...

The first time he _didn't_ enter the room he became a hospital prankster legend.

That had been an accident, too.

He'd been _looking_ for the room. A few hours' sleep and the percolation of a few thoughts and observations and it had abruptly dawned on him that it was a bit _odd_ to find a patient's room in the middle of the diagnostics wing. And the second that notion had crossed his brain, it was followed by a veritable stampede of concerns - like who was taking care of the patient whose room lay behind such an easily overlooked door?

So he searched the charts...and asked around...and accidentally committed the error of angering the nurses with the unintended suggestion that they didn't know where all their patients were...and generally created enough fuss that by the time he tried to re-enter the room he had such a crowd of unwanted followers that it was no wonder he threw open the door with a bit of flustered flourish...

...just in time to see their least liked resident getting it on in the broom closet with the hospital's prickliest lab technician.

He was an instant, embarrassed, hero.

The second and third time he didn't enter the room people thought he was trying to relive his triumph, running around the diagnostics ward flinging open doors only to close them immediately again. By the fifth or sixth time he didn't enter the room people were beginning to wonder about him a little...

Around the tenth time he didn't enter the room his supervisor sat him down for a little chat.

So it wasn't any wonder that second time he entered the room he almost didn't notice in his habitual check of the broom closet he was almost _sure_ was supposed to lead...right here. And there she was. He hadn't noticed the first time he entered the room that the bed's occupant was female, a young woman in her late teens or early twenties. Her chest rose and fell rhythmically in the steady respiration of deep sleep, and a quick glance at the chart and clock showed that the oddly outdated IV drip had been recently changed and regularly monitored.

Which, unfortunately, made his erstwhile noble pursuit a somewhat ethically dubious peek into the medical records of a patient that was not his own...

Relieved regardless, he once more slipped his way conscientiously out of the room, while a little niggling concern regarding the clock danced unheeded across his subconscious...

The third time he entered the room, he didn't really have an excuse to offer even himself. Habit had taken him back to the not-a-broom-closet and a certain curiosity had opened the door. The room remained unchanged - the IV bag was as full and fresh as before, the only sound was that of steady, peaceful breathing - the occupant slumbered on.

He did not know how long he stood there, staring into her unconscious face. It was a nice face, like that of a friend...

He returned to the room often after that - or tried to anyway. Oddly elusive for a room, the door seemed as likely to reveal a broom closet occupied by a fellow resident unhappily aroused from stolen slumber as it was to lead to the lonely room whose occupant never woke. Day after day, on every break and at every moment of downtime he returned, not quite sure what drew him back again, never quite wondering why he never saw anyone else go in that room...or why he never seemed to remember to check for her name on the chart...or how it was no one else seemed to know of the patient in the room that shouldn't be there...

...or question the sense that time seemed to move so much slower while he passed silent company with a seemingly forgotten girl, almost as if no time had passed at all...

Once, exhausted as he'd been the first time he found the room, he fell asleep in the chair next to her bed. It had been a long day, following hard on a rough night - so much so that his supervisor hadn't suggested he go on a break, she'd ordered it. He'd only meant to rest his eyes a moment...and started awake to the panicked realization that he was feeling far more refreshed than a moment should allow...

...only to be scolded for coming back on shift long before his break was over...

...and all he could think was how oddly quiet the unknown girl's room seemed besides the metronome of respiration...

...and he almost, _almost_ remembered to swing by City Hall on his way home to look up the blueprints for the hospital's remodel in the archives...

By the time he'd lost count of his visits, he'd long since gained a reputation for being distant and odd. The friendly young man and unintentional prankster had been replaced in the staff's minds by the dutiful but abstracted loner they'd become accustomed to seeing...

The last time he entered the room was in an act of sheer brave idiocy.

Remodelled though it had been, the hospital was still subject to that enemy which is time and human error - or perhaps it was negligence. Regardless, the result was a Code Red of fire that escalated rapidly into a Code Green of evacuation as protocol swept the staff and the patients in their care along designated routes to the exits...all except for one foolish soul who fought against the tide to make his way back into the inferno. Back to the room so very near its heart, because he knew, he just _knew_ that he was the only one that could...that would _think_...to get _her..._

By the time he reached the door the heat was almost unbearable, as he fumbled with the doorknob he prayed not to find a broom closet...

...and as the door gave way, he was astonished to fall forward into that quiet, cool, peaceful room at complete odds with the fire raging at its door. And suddenly those small, subconscious thoughts about the _wrongness_ of this room tried to press themselves upon him, but he was too focused on his goal, on the danger. The door slammed behind him as he struggled across the room, unaccountably weary as he reached out to grasp her by the wrist, abruptly aware that he had never tried to touch her before...

...and behind him hears for the first time the ticking of time's measure as a drop of liquid falls within the IV drip, and the clock strikes thirteen, and all at once he is buffeted in a gale of heat, as if the surrounding inferno had made it through the walls at last. Except that this isn't the blistering heat of fire, but the dry and stifling heat of a sun baked desert, biting at him like driven sand, the light glittering painfully in his eyes, its howling winds almost musical in the sound of their fury...

..._He squints his eyes against the orange glow, as if the walls have fallen away to reveal sunset on a strange, familiar landscape. And now there is a song on the wind of almost remembered longing as the light winks off a shimmering crystal, only it is shattered on the ground in a wail of despair as the clock ticks on until a new breeze begins to stir the pieces in skittering chimes of hope, gathering the fragments, rebuilding it anew and this time it is the clock that splinters and splits, its hands grinding to a halt as the wind's melody turns to triumph...only to falter with unaccustomed fear at the discordant sounds of the clock shuddering to life once more..._

_ ...and the wind roars back in a cacophony of challenge..._

...and just as suddenly there is something shielding him from the invisible storm; its unseen shape cool and almost human seeming as it wraps itself protectively around him.

_"Leave him alone, Jareth,"_ the calm, confident voice speaks in his mind, _"he meant no harm, he doesn't know..."_

_ ...Once upon a time..._

For a moment the winds' wrath intensifies as if further enraged by this defiance then-

_"Don't make me say the words,"_ a note of command creeping into the warning, as what might be arms tighten in an embrace he almost recognizes...

..._someone is calling his name..._

-dropping away in grudging acceptance as a fond, indulgent laugh echoes through his mind, and there is a feeling not unlike lips being pressed to his forehead. He almost thinks he hears a familiar voice speaking in his ear but a loud clattering sound makes him start up from the floor. The patient's chart has fallen, scattering its pages from which the name Sarah Williams - _Sarah -_ jumps out at him even as he remembers the blaze and looks anxiously around the room...

...to find no sign of fire. The silence ever undisturbed save for the resonant breathing of the bed's occupant who lies slumbering as always - no not quite, for her hand is slightly outstretched as if someone had just been holding it. And for some reason the sight causes a shudder down his spine as he looks hastily away only to see the last date on the papers scattered across the floor...

...this month...

...this day...

..._1992_...

..._as if no time had passed at all_...

..._and suddenly, dizzyingly, he is looking at the room from another perspective; a room filled with flowers and photos and wishes as a small boy holds the hand of a sleeping beauty while behind him the ticking of the clock is joined by the slow IV drip..._

_ ...as if no time had passed at all..._

_ Sarah_

He doesn't remember his panicked flight into the cooling, fire blackened ruin of the diagnostics ward. Stumbling blindly, desperate to escape what he can't understand, he falls into the arms of the firemen and is greeted as a miracle, an outcome beyond hoping for...

The last time he didn't enter the room he came as a thief in the night, sneaking beyond the safety barrier, regretting the decision to flee, wanting to know...fearing to find...hoping for anything other than the charred remnants of the broom closet he sees.

And as he turned disappointed feet in the direction of home, Toby Williams touches a hand to his forehead as he grieves what he found...and what he might have found.


End file.
